His nostrils flared as he released a breath. “I know, beautiful. I understand why you took it. I’m not angry at you. I love that you tried to tell me. You’re everything I always knew you were, and this only confirms it. I’m furious, though.”
“At Sam?” I guessed.
“Yes. He shouldn’t have put you in that position,” he gritted out.
I was pissed at Sam too, but for an entirely different reason.
My immediate need, however, was to eliminate the distance between Salvatore and me. I crawled across the mattress and up his body. His hands slid to my hips, helping me straddle his legs. I cupped his neck, and he held my waist, our chests flush.
“I noticed you, Sal. That first night, you blushed, and I thought you were so adorable. You came back the next night, and I was secretly hoping it was because you thought I was adorable too.”
“Not adorable. Stunning and mean.”
I grinned. “Yeah. You like me mean.” I rubbed my nose against his. “Sam approached me, asking me to give you extra attention. And I accepted because, well, I needed the money. If you’d been any other customer, though, I would have told him to get fucked. I took it because it was you, and I wanted to flirt with you anyway. The money was a very nice bonus.”
His grip on me tightened, the tips of his fingers digging into the give of my flesh. “He never should have put you in that position.”
“No, it wasn’t fair to either of us. But you need to know, that third night you came back? Even if he’d never given me a dime, I would have sat with you when you’d asked. And I would have said yes to a date because I was so fucking smitten with you.”
His head cocked. “Smitten?”
I laughed. “Tony’s wearing off on me, I guess. It’s a good word. I was—and am—totally into you. I hadn’t expected it, but it happened, and I went with it. I’m sorry this makes how we started messy, but for me, it was real and true.”
“It doesn’t matter to me.” He touched his lips to mine. “Even when Sam told me what he’d done, I didn’t doubt you. I wanted to understand exactly what happened, but the bottom line is, there’s nothing anyone could tell me about you that would make me doubt you.”
“That’s because no one knows me the way you do.”
“That’s right. Some of that knowledge I stole.”
I reared back, frowning. “Did you hack my hard drive?”
He chuckled. “No. I resisted. I meanAnthony. Through him, I peered into your life without your permission.”
“Oh.” My frown lifted. “Well, I always had a feelingsomeonewas behind him. If I’d known it was you, I probably would have started sexting.”
“What?” A laugh shook his shoulders, and he buried his face in my throat. “Christ, Beatrice. I never know what you’re going to say.”
“I’m keeping you on your toes, baby.”
He smiled against my skin. “That you are.”
I let him hold on to his happy for another minute then sighed. “We need to talk about Sam. Why did he bring up the money now? What do you think his intentions were?”
Hesobered, leaning his head back on the headboard. “I know his intentions: to drive a wedge between us so I would focus on Nox exclusively.”
My stomach dropped. “He’s been trying to get you away from me?”
“He’s been trying to control where I put my energy since we met, and I’ve let him. It’s how we worked back then, and the dynamic remained…well, until Tia died. After that, I had to make some huge changes he didn’t like but had to accept.”
Sam could really fuck right off. If I saw him again, I would tell him that.
He shook his head. “He’s been subtle about it, but he never stopped pushing me in the direction he wants me to go.”
I rested my hands on his chest, feeling his steady heartbeat. “Sal…what else has he steered you toward?”
He didn’t answer right away. His eyes were unfocused, distant, like he was riffling through mental files, looking for patterns. When he spoke again, his voice was quiet, almost too calm.
“Sam had my phone two years ago. He had to have replied to you then deleted those texts. There’s no other possibility.” His jaw worked as he mulled over his next words. “The email you got this morning…I dug through our servers and discovered it’d come from Sam. He sent it to you.”
